The Breakout Bishop

 

Well, Harry and Meghan celebrated their weekiversary three days ago, but people are still taking about the wedding. It was not your

grandmother's Episcopal wedding, or even you mother's, although it fit the standby Episcopal descriptives, “sensible” (which it was, compared to other royal weddings or even a nosebleed-high church mass) and “very nice.”

The bride's train was longer than the procession. There was no incense. (Oh, well, I haven't been to a service with incense since the carpet caught on fire on Christmas Eve years ago.) One of the songs was “Stand by Me”, sung by a Gospel choir who didn't wear robes.

But the most surprising thing was the sermon by Bishop Michael B. Curry, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. Bishop Curry is the first African American to be elected Presiding Bishop, and his election at the General Convention was unanimous.

His style can best be summed up by saying that if you didn't know better, you'd think he was a Baptist minister. The sermon spoke of the love between Harry and Meghan and branched off to the power of love to change to world, with stops along the way at slavery and Martin Luther King. It lasted thirteen minutes, which may have seemed skimpy to Baptists, but “a bit much” to Episcopalians and Brits. Elton John looked angrily pouty, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie looked as if they were trying to keep from laughing (By the way, where were Mum and Dad?), and the Queen looked dour, but then, she always does.

 

 

 

But the real fallout came from the media. In “How a Bad Curry Gave the Royal Wedding Guests a Spiritual Indigestion” in Anglican Link, the Reverend Jules Gomes asks, “How did the media miss the biggest religious story of the decade?” in which Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby “in a master stroke worthy of the serpentine cunning of . . . Machiavelli executes a bloodless coup d'etat against [among other things] a traditionalist monarch . . heterosexual marriage . . . and the disciplinary structure of The Church of England.” Gomes goes on that the Archbishop is using Bishop Curry as a Trojan horse, who “pulverize[s] and slice[s] conservatives with his Marxist sledgehammer and sickle.”

Of course this led to rebuttals (and rebuttals of the rebuttals), even that the title was “racist” because it is demeaning to make puns of people's names, and curry, which is brown like Bishop Curry, is presented negatively. I am trying to think of a connection between Gomes and Gnomes (Suggestions welcome.)

Tweets and Letters to the Editor also pointed out the media often used the incorrect title for the Bishop. (It's “The Most Reverend Michael Curry.”) Some had even referred to him as “a Bishop from Chicago.” Would this have happened if he were white? Just sayin'.

Bishop Curry has been making the rounds of the talk shows, including The View and Good Morning America.  Saturday Night Live included him (played by Kenan Thompson) on Weekend Update. He'll probably be guest hosting soon.

Who knows what effect all this will have? Will it be the start of a new Great Awakening? Will this sermon take its place with “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”? Will people think about what it says and act on their thoughts?

That would be very nice.